What is the moment calling forth in you? What kind of response is life calling forth in you? Adyashanti explores the interplay between finding an inner resource of peace within and expecting the world to conform to your ideas of peace. By becoming the manifestation of whatever change you want to see in the world, you are redefining your expectations of the world, taking responsibility for your own life, and engaging with your spirituality in a truly deep and profound way. Adyashanti invites you into the space where this vital question can be a living inquiry in your day-to-day practice.

“We are all most powerful and most benevolent when we are actually being whatever we want to see in the world. This is our first responsibility—to be what we want the world to become, or be the way that we would like human beings to be, interact, and engage with each other.”

“If you haven’t found the inner resource of clarity or peace or love or whatever you want to see in the world, then you’ll feel more on edge. Because you won’t be coming from being the change you want to see in the world. You’ll want the world to change so that you can be at peace, so that you can feel safe, secure, and loving.”

“In many respects, finding the right question is more important than an answer. If we think of answers in the sense of something that we are going to receive, that has some sort of final stamp of authority, that we can hold onto for the rest of our lives—that’s to misunderstand something very important about life, which is that life is a movement.”

“We human beings have the tendency to want to hold onto almost everything. If we get a revelatory experience, we tend to want to hold onto that and concretize it into a new system of thought or description of explanation. And as we are doing that, the flow of our lives is continuing on, and the next moment may call for a slightly different response.”

“To really be present for what life is calling forth in each of us is extremely important. Most people that are engaged in one form of spirituality or another, at least at a deep or inner level, part of what they’re valuing is peace, love, and clarity—and often there is a desire to see life as more whole or complete, and to experience your whole being in a clear and more complete way.”

“If we are engaged in a spiritual orientation, that comes with a kind of responsibility. The responsibility is: to be able to find within ourselves what we want to find or would desire to find in the world around us. Because if we can’t find it in ourselves, then we don’t have a whole lot of right demanding that the world conform to the way we want it to be.”

“Part of spirituality is taking that responsibility so that you become the manifestation of whatever change you want to see—you become it in your attitude, in the way you feel, in the way you move in the world, in the actions that you decide to take. This is really the heart of the spiritual life.”

“It’s so important that our spiritual life doesn’t become overly self-centered. It’s one of the dangers of a lot of inner work—that we can become so involved with our self that we are not really breathing out, we’re not engaged with our own lives and with our own existence, in a way that’s really fulfilling.”

“Our lives are the greatest gift we are ever going to give to the world.”